Recently, a friend of mine who lives in Toronto sent me a box full of Canadian candy. He didn’t ask me to review it, but I felt it was a unique opportunity to catalog some foods that those of us ootside Canadia might not get to see. This won’t be a review so much as an exploration. And a chance for me to make fun of Canadians.
I’ll be doing this in two sections, so look for Part 2 coming soon!
Nestle Smarties
When I first saw the Smarties box, I was mildly confused. Smarties? These are not Smarties! These are Smarties:
Interestingly, the American Smarties wrapper states that they are also made in Canada. Even more confusing.
Looking at the fine print, I see that these Smarties are “candy coated milk chocolate”. Huh. That sounds oddly familiar, eh?
Why yes, that’s just what I was thinking!
Obviously, Smarties look a little different than M&Ms. A little bit bigger and flatter, with an entirely different rainbow of colours. I’m not even sure what to call some of them. Periwinkle? Fuchsia? I like that Nestle went past Roy G. Biv when looking for a colour palette.
The candy shell is a little thicker than the one on M&Ms, giving the Smarties a nice crunch. The milk chocolate inside tastes a little bit different than M&Ms, but it’s not crazy different. I’ll show you something else crazy, though:
I’m not exactly sure aboot the marketing strategy, here. I see where they’re going with the colours thing, but…”Purple is the disco party you wish you could have seen your parents at”? Is there anyone who would like to see what their parents were doing at a disco party? Doing rails off the coffee table and then banging each other in the bathroom? I guess it would be a good ace in the hole the next time your mom catches you smoking weed in your bedroom, but other than that, I prefer to think of my parents as the people who like to landscape their front garden and eat at the same Mexican restaurant every Friday night.
Also, I was born via immaculate conception.
As for “Brown is always in style”, I have no idea what that even means, but it certainly sounds better in French. In case any of you slept through 12 grades of History, the French established settlements in Canada early in the 17th Century, and continued to colonize from there. There were some wars, you know, like we humans do, and in the end, the French held a strong presence in Canada, especially in the eastern area of the country. Because of this, French is an official language of Canada, and therefore all packaging in Canada is required to have French translations on it. I plan on pressuring my Canadian friend into constantly sending me junk food until I am fluent in French. Suck it, Rosetta Stone!
To conclude: Smarties are similar to M&Ms, but they have a thicker, crunchier candy shell, and would make perfect colourful replacements for the discs in the game Othello if their faces were painted different colours. I approve, although I’m kind of wary aboot Evan and Amanda. Canadian weirdos.
Nestle Aero
Here’s the deal with Aero: it’s a chocolate bar that has been aerated, which means it’s full of bubbles of air. A simple, if a little bizarre, concept, that has apparently been around in Europe for quite some time. Interestingly, The Impulsive Buy recently reviewed Hershey’s new Air Delight, which is also aerated, so you can read a real review and just pretend it’s aboot Aero. That also means that, if you are an American, you don’t need to cross borders to experience an aerated chocolate bar. Lucky you!
Looks pretty innocent on the ootside, eh?
Inside, we see the aeration in action. Unfortunately, it immediately made me think of casu marzu. Don’t know what that is? Google it. You’re welcome, I just saved you the money you were going to use to buy lunch.
While this association was unsettling, I pushed past it to try the Aero oot. Their slogan is, “have you felt the bubbles melt?” (That’s “laissez fondre les bulles…” in French! I have no idea why it just trails off with the ellipses, but now I have a new nickname for Bubbles when I power through the 23-disc box set of The Wire I just got for a steal. Oh Bulles, will you ever learn?)
It’s basically just a perfectly fine milk chocolate bar in taste, but for some reason, and I’m going to go with dark Canadian magic here, the bubbles make the chocolate creamier, with a very faint hint of crunch. I rather enjoyed the texture, since it added a little extra dimension to a regular chocolate bar. If I ever had a hankering for a regular ol’ chocolate bar, I just might hunt down the American Air Delight version instead of just grabbing a Hershey bar. As long as I don’t have to look at the inside too much.
Nestle BIG ‘R TURK Turkish Delight
Turkish Delight. I can’t see the words withoot thinking of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund, seduced by the evil White Witch with her box of Turkish delights. Being quite young when I read the book, I had no idea what a Turkish delight was, but I thought it had something to do with turkey, and I really didn’t think a candy made oot of cold cuts would be that enticing. I chalked it up to the British being weird.
Approximately 20 years later, I just realized I still have no fucking idea what Turkish delights are. I’m pretty sure they don’t actually involve turkey, however. I was actually a little alarmed when I cut the candy in half. My knife could barely go through it. It looked like chocolate covering a solid mass of dark magenta gel. It was intimidating. If the knife could barely cut through it, how would my teeth fare?
The wrapper gave me no indication of what the BIG ‘R TURK actually was, just calling it “candy” (“friandise”). The ingredients were equally vague, with general descriptions of “milk ingredients” and “artificial flavours”. I did, however, find Nestle’s Canadian website, which described it as “This delicious combination of jelly and chocolate offers one other pure pleasure: it’s got 60% less fat than the average chocolate bar!” Mmmm…jelly. My confidence had not increased.
With nothing left with which to stall me, I had to try it. It definitely was not as hard as I thought it would be. The jelly was thick, chewy and very sticky. I’ve never been fond of chewy candy like gummy bears, so I found it rather unpleasant. It stuck to my teeth and didn’t want to leave.
The colour of the gel made me think it was going to be raspberry-flavoured, but it was mostly just sickly sweet generic fruitiness with a hint of artificial raspberry at the end. The chocolate coating tasted like a cheap afterthought and quickly succumbed to the thick, sweet gel.
As you might have surmised, I am not a fan of the Big ‘R Turk. My Canadian friend has advised me that this is not much like actual Turkish delight. For the sake of the White Witch, I hope he’s right, because she could never lure me into her castle with this stuff. My ass would head straight back through that wardrobe and Narnia would remain a snowy wasteland. Aslan is a metaphor for Jesus.
Well, that ends part 1 of my sugar-fueled tour through Canuck territory. Look for part 2 coming soon! Maple Syrup Mounties hockey Les Stroud. There, I feel better now.